At
Politics & Prose, we are fortunate to provide readers with not
just books, but with a more intimate connection to authors and their
ideas. In our first book group interview, author Howard Norman talks
with bookseller Bill Leggett.
HOWARD NORMAN
is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships
and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion.
His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches
in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in
Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.
BL: Many of your works have great imagery: the photography in Devotion or the paintings in The Museum Guard, as examples. How important a role do photography and painting play in the creation of your stories?
HN: Photography and painting -- yes. But one other thing I like to write about is the radio. In almost every novel, the radio delivers what Chekhov called "sudden news that changes everything" -- of course, he was mainly referring to someone showing up at a dacha and announcing some astonishing thing.
Rather than refer to my own literary obsession with painting, photography, radio -- because I hope those will be on high exhibit in my novels -- allow me an anecdote. Years ago, I attended an auction of very rare natural history art held in Durrants Hotel in London. As a particular drawing (l6th century) was put on the display easel, and when the auctioneer had just provided this drawing's bona fides, suddenly from the audience standing along the side of the small room, a young woman, with rather a Pre-Raphaelite appearance, angled to the front and threw an open jar of black ink on the drawing! This sort of octopus of ink rivuletted down -- it was shocking and sad and the young woman was thrown to the ground by security and escorted forcefully out of the room. This kind of "suddenness" is inimitable to me as a writer.
BL: Your
novels are set in villages and towns in Canada. How important is this
to the tone you want to set visually or emotionally? Could you see
yourself writing a novel set in the Bahamas?
HN: Tone may be similar to what I would call atmosphere. And
atmosphere is a kind of ubiquity -- all events, emotional dimensions
of a story, the character's lives, exist within the atmosphere,
atmosphere is the air they breathe, if you will. And I work very hard
on creating atmosphere. I am drawn to a somewhat noir atmosphere -- a
slightly elusive sense of menace or building anxiety, without imposing
it too soon in a story. Letting it build, letting it infuse the story
with emotional intensity. If a writer is fortunate, he or she
discovers a demographic that works well with such concerns. For me, it
has -- and continues to be -- Nova Scotia, and Halifax in particular.
I wrote a whole book about this, My Famous Evening, a travel memoir. I used to have a quote typed out and taped to my manual typewriter: WHAT GOOD IS INTELLIGENCE IF YOU CANNOT DISCOVER A USEFUL MELANCHOLY? It's from the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryonosuke, perhaps best known for having written "Roshomon," made into a film by Kurosawa. I think about this a lot -- how do you transmute your basic nature into art, into writing, into life itself? When I am in Halifax, I often experience what Graham Greene called a "noir of the heart." It's the weather, it's the cloudscapes, it's the history, it's the sea, it's how people talk -- so many factors working symphonically. I try and evoke this atmosphere in my novels.
As
for where these novels are set, it is the very most important thing to
me. I think of Faulkner in that respect: he wrote about basically
the same place, but refracted certain essential experiences and
incidents and human conundrums, and this resulted, of course, in quite
varied stories. Or take the painter Diebenkorn: his California
landscapes are different, but there are certain unifying elements
between them all. So, no, I could not set a novel in the Bahamas and
expect it to have the least sense of verisimilitude. Try Simone
Schwartz-Bart as a Caribbean novelist -- she is a genius. As for
provenance, I don't believe it, when it comes to novels. It is not
about where you are from, but that you discover a place to set novels
that most intensify and challenge your literary imagination. If
Conrad would have relied on provenance, he would have set all his
novels in Poland.
Bill Leggett: As
a teacher of writing and literature, and as someone who has
participated in many book discussions, what would you as a reader want
to get from a discussion of one of your books, or really any work of
literature?
Howard Norman: This week I participated in a discussion of a memoir of mine, In Fond Remembrance of Me,
which is about some months in the arctic working with Inuit folktales
and a woman named Helen Tanizaki, who remains tremendously important
to me. She died in the late l970's in Kyoto. While we were indeed
discussing a memoir and not a novel, as the discussion went along, I was aware that the things that may be sustaining to a writer during the years it takes to
compose a book may be quite different than what a reader might suspect
they are. In this regard, it is important, I feel, to say that the
most persistently "autobiographical" aspect of any novel is the
imagination itself. There is nothing more personal. The facts of a
writer's life are one thing, how those facts become -- again, Chekhov
-- part of the "elixir of the writerly imagination" as manifested in a
novel is something else altogether.
I would like readers to experience a writer doing the best he can to give characters back their lives, with the vivid immediacy and perhaps also the spectral quality of a séance.
BL: Again,
as a reader, have you discovered anything lately you think would a be
a good choice for a group discussion? (This could cover any genre).
HN:
To love a book and recommend it for a "discussion" may be quite
different things. However, in thinking about the devotion and erudition
of book clubs in general, allow me to "recommend" a forthcoming novel, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, an older novel, A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, A Month in the Country by J.M. Carr, and the wonderful stories of Gina Berriault collected in Women in Their Beds, one of our finest and yet overlooked writers of short stories.
Bill Leggett:Your
books deal with difficult love affairs, and with characters who
reflect deeply on their lives and choices and yet are also involved in
acts of violence. Would you shed some light on this?
Howard Norman:
A friend noticed and said, "In Howard's novels, when a couple finally
end up together, it is because they have exhausted all negative
possibilities!" And yes, very difficult courtships
are a kind of narrative strategy for me. I think narratively; one
narrative is how do history, people's deepest natures, and even fate
intervene on the finding of love. The novel I'm presently writing, Next Life Might Be Kinder,
is partly about a man whose wife was murdered, but who keeps seeing
her -- every evening she lines books up on a beach. He doesn't want to let her go; that is, he wants their life-long courtship -- the courtship within the marriage -- to continue. While it is true that some of my characters reflect deeply on their own lives, just as often it is a neighbor, or romantic interest, or colleague of some sort, who reflect even more deeply on another's life. This is reflection by indirection -- characters attempting to get other characters to think and act a certain way. Chekhov said, "When a love story is unfolding, it is by definition philosophical, though it doesn't need be written in lofty philosophical language. There has to be passion, though. Passionate intensity." There it is -- I've gone and done it again! -- asked Chekhov to comment on how I want readers to view my stories. To let another far more articulate sensibility to comment on my own!
Violence is in my novels. Each has a violent act -- or acts -- as an intensifying element to the arc of the love story. But those incidents are not meant to have the entire story reliant on them. They are crescendos of emotion. In What Is Left The Daughter, certainly the sinking of the Caribou Ferry by a German U-boat -- and the murder of the young German philology student Hans Mohring -- are ghastly acts of violence. But they also intervene on a love affair and young marriage and it is in how violence detours lives permanently that I am very interested in while writing novels.
Reading Howard is one thing, but for a different perspective, listen to this NPR interview with Scott Simon. Howard's latest novel, What is Left the Daughter, is currently in hardcover and will be available in paperback this summer.
Author Q&A: Howard Norman
At
Politics & Prose, we are fortunate to provide readers with not
just books, but with a more intimate connection to authors and their
ideas. In our first book group interview, author Howard Norman talks
with bookseller Bill Leggett.
Bio: HOWARD NORMAN
is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships
and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel,The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novelThe Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion.
His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches
in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in
Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.
BL: Many of your works have great imagery: the photography in Devotion or the paintings in The Museum Guard, as examples. How important a role do photography and painting play in the creation of your stories?
HN: Photography and painting -- yes. But one other thing I like to write about is the radio. In almost every novel, the radio delivers what Chekhov called "sudden news that changes everything" -- of course, he was mainly referring to someone showing up at a dacha and announcing some astonishing thing.
Rather than refer to my own literary obsession with painting, photography, radio -- because I hope those will be on high exhibit in my novels -- allow me an anecdote. Years ago, I attended an auction of very rare natural history art held in Durrants Hotel in London. As a particular drawing (l6th century) was put on the display easel, and when the auctioneer had just provided this drawing's bona fides, suddenly from the audience standing along the side of the small room, a young woman, with rather a Pre-Raphaelite appearance, angled to the front and threw an open jar of black ink on the drawing! This sort of octopus of ink rivuletted down -- it was shocking and sad and the young woman was thrown to the ground by security and escorted forcefully out of the room. This kind of "suddenness" is inimitable to me as a writer.
BL: Your
novels are set in villages and towns in Canada. How important is this
to the tone you want to set visually or emotionally? Could you see
yourself writing a novel set in the Bahamas?
HN: Tone may be similar to what I would call atmosphere. And
atmosphere is a kind of ubiquity -- all events, emotional dimensions
of a story, the character's lives, exist within the atmosphere,
atmosphere is the air they breathe, if you will. And I work very hard
on creating atmosphere. I am drawn to a somewhat noir atmosphere -- a
slightly elusive sense of menace or building anxiety, without imposing
it too soon in a story. Letting it build, letting it infuse the story
with emotional intensity. If a writer is fortunate, he or she
discovers a demographic that works well with such concerns. For me, it
has -- and continues to be -- Nova Scotia, and Halifax in particular.
I wrote a whole book about this,My Famous Evening, a travel memoir. I used to have a quote typed out and taped to my manual typewriter: WHAT GOOD IS INTELLIGENCE IF YOU CANNOT DISCOVER A USEFUL MELANCHOLY? It's from the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryonosuke, perhaps best known for having written "Roshomon," made into a film by Kurosawa. I think about this a lot -- how do you transmute your basic nature into art, into writing, into life itself? When I am in Halifax, I often experience what Graham Greene called a "noir of the heart." It's the weather, it's the cloudscapes, it's the history, it's the sea, it's how people talk -- so many factors working symphonically. I try and evoke this atmosphere in my novels.
As
for where these novels are set, it is the very most important thing to
me. I think of Faulkner in that respect: he wrote about basically
the same place, but refracted certain essential experiences and
incidents and human conundrums, and this resulted, of course, in quite
varied stories. Or take the painter Diebenkorn: his California
landscapes are different, but there are certain unifying elements
between them all. So, no, I could not set a novel in the Bahamas and
expect it to have the least sense of verisimilitude. Try Simone
Schwartz-Bart as a Caribbean novelist -- she is a genius. As for
provenance, I don't believe it, when it comes to novels. It is not
about where you are from, but that you discover a place to set novels
that most intensify and challenge your literary imagination. If
Conrad would have relied on provenance, he would have set all his
novels in Poland.
Bill Leggett: As
a teacher of writing and literature, and as someone who has
participated in many book discussions, what would you as a reader want
to get from a discussion of one of your books, or really any work of
literature?
Howard Norman: This week I participated in a discussion of a memoir of mine, In Fond Remembrance of Me,
which is about some months in the arctic working with Inuit folktales
and a woman named Helen Tanizaki, who remains tremendously important
to me. She died in the late l970's in Kyoto. While we were indeed
discussing a memoir and not a novel, as the discussion went along, I was aware that the things that may be sustaining to a writer during the years it takes to
compose a book may be quite different than what a reader might suspect
they are. In this regard, it is important, I feel, to say that the
most persistently "autobiographical" aspect of any novel is the
imagination itself. There is nothing more personal. The facts of a
writer's life are one thing, how those facts become -- again, Chekhov
-- part of the "elixir of the writerly imagination" as manifested in a
novel is something else altogether.
I would like readers to experience a writer doing the best he can to give characters back their lives, with the vivid immediacy and perhaps also the spectral quality of a séance.
BL: Again,
as a reader, have you discovered anything lately you think would a be
a good choice for a group discussion? (This could cover any genre).
HN:
To love a book and recommend it for a "discussion" may be quite
different things. However, in thinking about the devotion and erudition
of book clubs in general, allow me to "recommend" a forthcoming novel, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, an older novel, A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, A Month in the Country by J.M. Carr, and the wonderful stories of Gina Berriault collected in Women in Their Beds, one of our finest and yet overlooked writers of short stories.
Bill Leggett:Your
books deal with difficult love affairs, and with characters who
reflect deeply on their lives and choices and yet are also involved in
acts of violence. Would you shed some light on this?
Howard Norman:
A friend noticed and said, "In Howard's novels, when a couple finally
end up together, it is because they have exhausted all negative
possibilities!" And yes, very difficult courtships
are a kind of narrative strategy for me. I think narratively; one
narrative is how do history, people's deepest natures, and even fate
intervene on the finding of love. The novel I'm presently writing, Next Life Might Be Kinder,
is partly about a man whose wife was murdered, but who keeps seeing
her -- every evening she lines books up on a beach. He doesn't want to let her go; that is, he wants their life-long courtship -- the courtship within the marriage -- to continue. While it is true that some of my characters reflect deeply on their own lives, just as often it is a neighbor, or romantic interest, or colleague of some sort, who reflect even more deeply on another's life. This is reflection by indirection -- characters attempting to get other characters to think and act a certain way. Chekhov said, "When a love story is unfolding, it is by definition philosophical, though it doesn't need be written in lofty philosophical language. There has to be passion, though. Passionate intensity." There it is -- I've gone and done it again! -- asked Chekhov to comment on how I want readers to view my stories. To let another far more articulate sensibility to comment on my own!
Violence is in my novels. Each has a violent act -- or acts -- as an intensifying element to the arc of the love story. But those incidents are not meant to have the entire story reliant on them. They are crescendos of emotion. In What Is Left The Daughter, certainly the sinking of the Caribou Ferry by a German U-boat -- and the murder of the young German philology student Hans Mohring -- are ghastly acts of violence. But they also intervene on a love affair and young marriage and it is in how violence detours lives permanently that I am very interested in while writing novels.
Reading Howard is one thing, but for a different perspective, listen to this NPR interview with Scott Simon. Howard's latest novel, What is Left the Daughter, is currently in hardcover and will be available in paperback this summer.
